


Spero Meliora

by wreathed



Category: The Terror (TV 2018)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Ficlet, Gen, M/M, Murder, Names, No Dialogue
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-24
Updated: 2020-06-24
Packaged: 2021-03-04 07:34:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24900010
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wreathed/pseuds/wreathed
Summary: Hickey's intentions.
Relationships: Cornelius Hickey/Lt John Irving, William Gibson/Cornelius Hickey
Comments: 12
Kudos: 21
Collections: Fingerbang #1





	Spero Meliora

In Crozier’s tent, there are charts covered in lands and seas and names. At their edges lies space as pale and barren on the page as the ice they’ve trudged through, waiting to be mapped and christened: geographical features once anticipated to be uncovered by those in possession of a spyglass and honoured after monarchs, knights, and others already fixed with greatness.

Hickey nudges curiously at a small quantity of spoiled cutlet with the bowl of a silver spoon. Special dispensation has been granted for him to handle such a worthy thing with his working hands, but only because their party is now weighed down by more hallmarked sterling than they possess officers or food. The value of individual effects has been altered by their circumstances; an emptied out tin can, tossed aside, will linger here longer than the lot of them. He’d once seen drawings in the weeklies of freshly excavated flint blades last used thousands of years before Christ. How long can a soul in this world last, Hickey wonders, if it is a gift given freely?

The spoon had belonged to Fairholme, late of Erebus. He has been gone for such a long time, and for all that duration the silver has slumbered useless in its velvet box. Not yet officially deceased, most of the men who know Fairholme’s crest had left the box untouched out of superstition, but Hickey knows better. You cannot steal from a dead man. Everything he once had must pass on to someone new.

Hickey had pressed his fingernails and the tines of Fairholme’s fork into Billy’s outstretched palm. He smirks whenever he sees Billy making use of it, its origin either unnoticed or not minded: he and Billy, a husband and wife in some fine house holding matched heirlooms between their delicate fingers.

There is a bird with an olive branch on the finial, and Latin words Hickey deduces must mean something to do with peace. He has carved initials there, and others have done the same to theirs: the men sit, decaying, scratching marks that would outlast them like trapped animals clawing at walls. They may not have heraldry, but they do have names.

So many officers already lost. Some who remain might come quietly. Others will not. Hickey has his sights set somewhere higher than a reward of unwanted cutlery. Silver is no good for anything tougher than salt pork, and he is living beside creatures with thicker hides.

With Goodsir’s trust he could have obtained a sharper blade more easily, but no matter: he’d found another way, and etched the name bequeathed to him on that handle too.

A surgeon would know exactly where to cut, but precision is an uninteresting mercy. Hickey sees clearly how the moment will go: Irving and he will be alone, same-breath intimate, and Hickey will be in complete control. He will press only hard enough to carve his true initials into Irving’s chest, then slip the blade in just a little further.

**Author's Note:**

> I wasn't meant to read up on the [cutlery of deceased officers getting distributed to the remaining men of the Franklin expedition](http://hidden-tracks-book.blogspot.com/2009/05/plea-for-information-on-franklin.html) and get _emotions_ , for goodness sake. One of Fairholme's recovered spoons is initialled 'CH'. (There's also mention of Hickey's surgical knife at the link.)
> 
> 'Spero Meliora' was Fairholme's family motto, translating to 'I aspire to greater things'.


End file.
